WickeLeaks LIVES!! This is news so big, it brought Wicke Intl temporarily out of retirement!

Laugh Out Loud Theater, a fixture in the Northwest Suburbs for the past nine years, has opened a second location in Chicago’s bustling Northcenter neighborhood, and now they’re celebrating with a Grand Opening Gala this Friday and Saturday!

Laugh Out Loud Chicago features an all-star cast that includes veterans of comedy establishments such as Second City, iO, The Annoyance, ComedySportz and more. The Chicago venue currently features shows every Friday and Saturday night. The early show at 7:30pm is always guaranteed to be appropriate and fun for all ages, while the 9:30pm show is geared more towards adults.

What do they do that’s so funny at Laugh Out Loud? Why, improvisation, of course! Your suggestions inspire everything you see on stage and help create hilarious scenes, songs, and games right before your eyes!

Laugh Out Loud Chicago also offers classes, a free open mic, and corporate entertainment and training. Look for other shows slated in the coming months to include: Buzzed Broadway (a musical with drinking), The Experts (TED talk meets improv), and Neutrino Project (an improvised movie).

On Friday, March 25 and Saturday, March 26 there will be a special grand opening celebration with improv comedy shows at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. The $30 ticket includes the show, prizes, bar specials, a raffle, surprise guests, champagne toast, and a chance to see the revamped space and meet the ensemble and staff!

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Tonight at 8pm, undeterred by frostbite and hypothermia, discerning comedy fans will gather at the aptly-named Wrigleyville bar, BEER, to see Proxy Morons!

Comedians Kaitlyn Grissom, Josh Johnson, Erin Lane and Grace Lusk produce this new alt comedy showcase where you can see things you won’t find elsewhere in Chicago. Every Tuesday night will feature a comedy musician or band, a solo character performer, some of the best stand-up comedians in the city, and… a special guest comedian that will be forbidden from doing their normal material. Instead, they’ll be challenged to play a game, do an entire set of crowd work, or read from their childhood journal. There will be a different game every week, as well as a new lineup of acts keeping it weird.

Grace Lusk hosts tonight’s show which includes the comedy band Fruit Flies; the solo characters of Ali Clayton; and the stand-up of David Franks, Erin Lane, Jason Earl Folks, Josh Johnson and headliner Adam Burke!

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Opening Saturday, January 11 at Raven Theatre!

Sex, lies and cunning villainy abound in this manic modern translation of the classic satire! Wealthy playboy Callimaco will stop at nothing to bed the world’s most beautiful woman, who is unfortunately both quite virtuous and quite married. The solution can only be chicanery! With the assistance of a manipulative schemer, a corrupt priest, and a certain aphrodisiacal plant, a plot to dupe the old and foolish husband is set in motion. Will the deception be revealed, or will Callimaco get his satisfaction? The ends obviously justify the means in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Mandrake!

This latest translation by my friends at Commedia Beauregard is a big, fun, gleefully wicked romp that makes a mockery of all that is good and pure, so of course I love it! It’s a hell of a fun show, especially for something that was published in 1524!

The Mandrakeopens January 11 and runs through February 9, 2014:Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00pm, and Sundays at 3:30pm.

But you can also catch the “Twitter Preview” on Friday, January 10 at 8:00pm! Tickets are only $12 and audience members are encouraged to take photos and tweet, instagram and share their experience via social media during the show!

And if that wasn’t enough, you can also see the show FOR FREE at the “Pay With Your Can” Matinee onSunday, January 12 at 3:30pm! Just like Commedia Beauregard has done with A Klingon Christmas Carol, this special show is a food drive to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository! Bring in 1 non-perishable food item for a $10 discount. Bring 3 food items and get into the show for FREE!

Discounted tickets are “first come, first served” and only available at the door, so get there early!

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The great Stephen Sondheim composed eight musicals in 31 years. Slacker. At One Night Only, the cast creates a brand new musical each night, complete with singing, dancing, rhyming, reprises and free play. These veteran Chicago improvisers use audience suggestions to create a 60-minute joyride that’s never been seen before and will never be seen again.

In April of 2012, a group of Chicago improvisers ﬂew to New York and pitched an idea for a new musical to The Araca Group (Broadway producers of Wicked, Rock of Ages, Urinetown). The cast made up a musical right there on the spot in the middle of their conference room. A week later, One Night Only was one of six productions out of 90 applicants selected to appear Off Broadway as part of the 2012 Araca Project. A successful preview run at Chicago’s Stage 773 preceded this New York City debut at The American Theatre of Actors in September. Now after a year long hiatus, One Night Only returns home to Stage 773 for this special engagement!

Producer and creator Michael Girts, a Second City performer and faculty member, has assembled an artistic team full of some of Chicago’s most esteemed comedy and musical professionals. Director TJ Shanoff has worked for The Second City since 1997, where he composed musicals such as Rod Blagojevich Superstar and Jewsical, and directed such hits as Chicago Live! and The Second City’s 50th Anniversary on Tour. Musical Director Mike Descoteaux created The Second City Training Center’s musical improv conservatory program, and previously served as musical director on The Second City E.T.C. stage. He has “composed” thousands of completely improvised musicals with groups such as Baby Wants Candy, Musical! The Musical, and Infinite Sundaes. He is also the creator of the critically acclaimed Best Church of God.

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My friends at Commedia Beauregard are once again doing their annual “Pay With Your Can” food drive for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and that means if you bring in non-perishable food items, you can get a discount on your ticket or even seeA Klingon Christmas Carolfor FREE!

Bring 1 food item, you get $10 off your ticket, or bring 3 food items and you get in to the show for free!

Any canned goods are welcome, but here’s a list of what the GCFD needs the most:

• Beans

• Canned Fruit

• Canned Vegetables

• Cereal

• Chili

• Jelly

• Macaroni and Cheese

• Pasta

• Pasta Sauce

• Peanut Butter

• Rice

• Shelf-Stable Milk

• Soup

• Stew

• Tuna

Keep in mind, this deal is only on December 2 and a long line usually forms so get down there early! The tickets are first come first serve at the door, so if you want to guarantee your seats for that performance, you must pay for them in the normal way via 773.338.2177 or CBTheatre.org!

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It’s a whole new world this year in Commedia Beauregard’s A Klingon Christmas Carol, which opens this Saturday at Edgewater’s Raven Theatre. After doing essentially the same show for the last 7 years, creator Christopher Kidder-Mostrom decided it was ripe for reinvention. And reinvent they did, with new “Steampunk Klingon” costumes, a gritty new multi-level set, new weapons, new soundscape, new cast, and even a new Scrooge with Clark Bender stepping into the cowardly boots of SQuja’!

Bender is one of the few returning cast members this year, all of whom are in new roles as no actors were allowed to return to the same parts. Everyone will be in brand-new costumes, designed by kClare Kemock to be a mash-up of Klingon garb and the frock coats of Victorian England, and on Ian Mostrom’s exciting new multi-level set with the industrial feel of a roughed-up space outpost. With the transformation complete, Commedia Beauregard is ready to unveil its new Carolat tonight’s “Twitter Preview” (where the audience is allowed to live-tweet the show), and then at their opening night tomorrow!

If you haven’t heard, A Klingon Christmas Carol is the hilarious and surprisingly heart-warming translation of Charles Dickens’ classic holiday tale into the language and culture of Star Trek’s famous warrior aliens, the Klingons.

A Klingon Christmas Carol is indeed the first full-length play ever to be produced entirely in the Klingon language. Yes, there is a real, actual, honest-to-god Klingon language. It was invented by renowned linguist Marc Okrand (a big fan of the show) at the behest of Paramount Pictures during the production of Star Trek III. (See him explain the process in the videos below!)

So how do Klingons celebrate Christmas? Well, they don’t. Klingons can’t celebrate the birth of the son of god because they don’t have any gods. Because they killed them. Long story short, the equivalent is the Feast of the Long Night, a kind of winter solstice that’s big on the Klingon home planet, Kronos.

And it’s on Kronos that we find SQuja’, counting his money and berating his employee QachIt. He is the worst kind of man in the Klingon culture: a coward with no honor. But when the ghost of his business partner marlI’ attacks to warn him of the eternal torment that awaits him, he is given a chance at redemption. Three spirits will visit SQuja’ to convince him to regain his honor and become a proper Klingon warrior… but will he see the light in time to save QachIt’s weak son, tiny tImHom, from certain death?

It is a tale full of fierce combat, time travel, and guttural snarls, all drolly narrated by a Vulcan representative from the Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.

Don’t speak Klingon? Don’t worry, there are English supertitles projected above the stage.

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The People’s Republic of Edward Snowden will not be rocking the Chicago Theatre after all! Instead the show’s November 15 performance will be at the Berger Park Cultural Center! (And the shows at Prop Thtr on Nov 7 & 14 are unchanged!)

It seems that the New York owners of the Chicago Theatre stepped in at the last minute to lay some outrageous and excessive costs on this small production, so there’s been a change of plans!

Upholding his dedication to affordable ticket prices, Turck has declined the contract offered by the Chicago Theatre, which boasted previously undisclosed costs including such items as $4,000 for stagehands (to support the production’s three actors) and $600 for Bomb Detection Dogs.

“There was a $1,080 charge to load the play in and load it out of the theater,” said Turck. “I guess that meant the Chicago Theatre would have been physically carrying my cast, directors, stage manager and me into and out of the show, a la Lady Gaga!”

Rather than pass those costs on to the audience, Turck has instead chosen to hold the final performance of The People’s Republic of Edward Snowden at Edgewater’s historic icon, the Berger Park Mansion. There will also now be a post-show discussion and meet & greet with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and refreshments.

The People’s Republic of Edward Snowden

The man responsible for one of the biggest intelligence leaks in US history is talking again, but this time he’s telling his own story. In this satirical triumph by local activist W.C. Turck, Edward Snowden emerges from his undisclosed location to hold a very personal press conference on what brought him to expose the dirtiest secrets of our National Security Agency. With a razor wit, Snowden reflects on his journey, his new home in lovely Russia, and the comfort he takes in our government’s promise not to torture or execute him.

With a directing team plucked from political sketch comedy company Democracy Burlesque, The People’s Republic of Edward Snowdentakes an irreverent, poignant look at freedom and privacy in our time. Is Snowden a traitor? A hero? Could this be “the Most Dangerous Play in America?” You decide.